voice talents miss the boat

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I was doing some email blasts this week and sorting through my various databases, one of which is LinkedIn. Unlike a lot of social media tools, LinkedIn allows users to download the contact information of those you are directly connected with so you can communicate with them outside of LinkedIn.

As you might expect, a fair amount (but hardly all) of my contacts are voice talents. This email blast wasn’t for them so I was sorting them out by title out of my LinkedIn database when I came across an interesting pattern.

Many professional voice talents do not include the terms voice talent or voice over talent in their title on LinkedIn. They say things like “president” or “owner”. My guess would be that they also don’t do this on their business cards as well, though I can’t prove it. They are probably relying on their company name to tell the whole story.

This strikes me as a missed marketing opportunity. Here’s why:

1. Always be accurately introducing yourself to the world
– If you’re a plumber, tell the world so there’s no mistaking it; same if you’re a voice talent. Leave very little room for interpretation about whom you are professionally…people like clarity, especially in job titles. It’s just the way it is.

2. Always remind the search engines who you are – In organic search (the search results that aren’t paid for and just come up when you input certain words) you can never be sure how people are going to come across your personal brand or business. Anyone of your social media or pay-to-play web site listings could come up….consistency in your title could be helpful for the keywords in your organic rankings

3. Always be helpful to people doing database searches – Outside of my example, people do search their databases in a number of ways and for a number of reasons. One of them could be to find all the voice talents in their database to pick a voice. While it’s up to the user to decide what title they ultimately type in, you need to help them with a suggested title right under your name on your business card.

As for me, I’ve always had the best of both worlds because I am a voice talent and I provide a casting service for female voice talents and international voice talents. Peter K. O’Connell – President/Voice Talent.

Does this make sense or do you think I’m full of beans? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

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